


Iron Man and Doctor Doom versus the Teenage Vampire Girls

by tisfan



Series: Tony Stark Bingo [16]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Tony goes all Van Helsing, Twilight Bashing, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-29
Updated: 2018-08-29
Packaged: 2019-07-04 00:04:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15829656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: Doom has a problem. A vampire problem. And he turns to the only person he can think of who can help him.





	Iron Man and Doctor Doom versus the Teenage Vampire Girls

**Author's Note:**

> for Tony Stark Bingo Square: T5: Doom offering Iron Man some champagne

“Doom choses to blame you for these circumstances,” Doom said, his voice hollow behind the mask he always wore.

“Can’t say there’s much unusual in that,” Tony admitted. He popped the face mask up on the suit because Doom wasn’t trying to shoot him, and hadn’t sicced any doombots on him, and that was unusual. He’d come into Manhattan, landed in Central Park and announced to the terrified people there that he wished to speak with Iron Man. It hadn’t taken Tony but seven minutes and thirteen seconds to arrive (he really needed to speed up the suit’s automation processes.) to see what Doom wanted.

Tony would have figured that Doom had some ultimatum to deliver; Surrender Dorothy, and your little dog Toto (Tony didn’t even have a little dog Toto).

Instead, what he found was Doom sitting cross-legged in the grass, and a metal-clad hand waved in Tony’s direction. “Sit please.”

Please was new.

“What do you want?” Might as well keep things cordial, right? At the moment, no one was shooting and nobody was bleeding and that was a step in the right direction. Right?

“Doom requires assistance,” Doom said ponderously. “Doom’s home has been invaded.”

Tony’s eyebrow shot up. “I hadn’t heard about an invasion,” he marveled. It wasn’t likely to be anything military. Most of the world’s governments wished Latveria to perdition, but they didn’t interfere. Doom was sovereign in his own nation, and as long as he wasn’t fucking around with the borders, everyone was more than happy (read, too much of a fucking coward) to leave him to his own devices. Either that, or they were afraid that getting the Avengers to attack Latveria directly would lead to superheroes messing in government business, and while most nations weren’t quite as open with their brutalities as Latveria, they were all pretty much shithole dictatorships with fancy titles.

Tony was pretty sure he could do a better job running the world, but it just didn’t sound like any fun at all.

“Are we talking like, the Beatles and Rolling Stones sorts of--”

“Worse,” Doom said, taking him seriously.

“What’s worse than hordes of screaming fans fainting about _Love Me, Do_?”

“Hordes of _Twilight_ fans who have sought to become the undead,” Doom said.

“What?”

“Did Doom stutter?”

“You’re uh, serious? Like, actual teenage girls--”

“Quite serious,” Doom said. “Latveria has long been a refuge for some few vampires; outcasts of Dracula’s kingdom. They keep to themselves and pay tribute, so Doom allows it.”

“And they eat your citizenry?” That was just fucked up, man. Tony wasn’t personally adverse to alternative diets, but not being on the top of the food chain was disturbing.

“There are few places on the planet that are safe from all risk,” Doom said. “Do you not have cities on eroding coastlines?”

Well, that might have been true, but Tony wasn’t sure it was fair to compare a coven of vampires to a hurricane. “So, uh, you figure this is my fault? You want to run that by me?”

They were still talking; it was such a novelty that Tony wanted to keep it going for its own sake. It was rare that he got to do much more than exchange witty banter with the villains while they worked very hard to kick each other’s asses. And, at the moment, the spangly man with a plan hadn’t been called in as backup, and so there wasn’t any need to escalate, just yet.

“The Maria Stark literacy foundation has been sending translated books into Latveria as part of their outreach program,” Doom explained. “Some copies of a teenage romance drama, called _Twilight_ , were included. The passions of certain groups of young people were aroused and they ventured, en masse, into the dark wood, looking for either eternal life, or the love of one such.”

Tony closed his eyes; he had the beginnings of a headache right behind his eyeballs. “Tell me people aren’t that stupid,” he begged. But who was he fooling, of _course_ people were that stupid. He was pretty sure if American girls knew where a vampire could be found, they’d be hiking there in droves. Not that he could entirely blame them, high school boys being what they were, being eaten by a vampire might be preferable.

“To be fair, Doom will say that they are not entirely young women,” Doom said. “Eternal youth and strength appeal to more than just women.”

That was probably true, too. Just, at least in the United States, most teenage boys would rather emasculate themselves than admit that they read _Twilight_. (even if a lot of them actually did.) (Okay, so _Tony_ had read _Twilight_ , what the hell, everyone was reading it and Tony hated feeling left out of the jokes.)

“Right, okay, no more vampire romances in the book shipments,” Tony said, clapping his gauntleted hands together. “Glad to have solved that problem. Let me know if there’s anything else we can do for you, this has been great, Vickie--”

“Stop cavorting, Stark,” Doom snapped. “Doom requires your aid in dealing with the issue at hand, not future issues.”

“Well, you know I _am_ a futurist,” Tony protested.

“Pack a bag,” Doom growled. “And ready yourself.”

“I am not going all Van Helsing on a bunch of _Once Bitten_ fangirls, that’s like super uncool,” Tony said. He was uncomfortable with that, too, because everyone who’d ever seen Interview with the Vampire knew that no matter how cute Kirsten Dunst was, she was dangerous and uncontrollable and a hazard to everyone around her.

 _Fuck_.

“Fortunately for you, that neither works, nor is what Doom had in mind,” Doom said. “It is the head vampire we must seek, for only in his death will the others -- who have not yet fed on the blood of a human and killed them -- be turned away from the curse.”

Tony raised an eyebrow. “That works?”

“Doom has always been told it is the case, and the study of ancient texts and grimoires confirms. Doom will know that, for certain, once the deed is accomplished. Doom has no intentions of slaughtering his own people.”

Well, at least Doom had a few good points, Tony would give him credit. “And you need me, because?”

“Doombots are not programmed for crowd control or gentleness,” Doom said. “Doom needs an ally who understands preservation and who does not believe in acceptable losses. Doom requires your aid, Tony Stark. Will you give it?”

Tony didn’t even hesitate to grasp Doom’s hand. If it was a trap that he was walking into, so fucking be it. “I will.”

***

“What I want to know,” Tony said, panting for air, the face plate popping up. The woman they’d had no choice but to kill was in pieces around them, and Tony averted his eyes as Doom roughly, and without much seeming emotion, cut off her head and drove an ash stake through her heart. Later, they’d gather the pieces and bury them -- face down -- in a coffin filled with garlic and rose petals. There would be praying. Rather a lot of praying, and for someone who didn’t believe in God, Tony’d been doing an awful lot of rosary chants recently.

Doom waited a brief period, as if interested in what Tony wanted to know, but Tony just trailed off helplessly, staring at the vampiric remains and wishing they’d have gotten to the scene ten minutes sooner.

Doom crossed himself and got up. His green cape fluttered sullenly in the wind, stained with blood and ragged at the edges.

Doom had a lot of capes. Tony was pretty sure he had a whole team of seamstresses who made them on command, since even though his cape went through hell -- sometimes literally -- every time they found one of these wayward vampires, he seemed to always have a new one at the beginning.

“What I want to know,” Tony started again, “is how the disease _knows_.”

“You still persist in thinking of it in terms of science,” Doom pointed out, “when clearly, it is of the mystic arts. It is a curse, not a germ, that does this.”

“So, how does the curse know if our infected has actually killed someone? What difference does it make?”

Tony might not have believed in the nature of the infection if he hadn’t seen it working. There were a few stages for vampirism, for lack of a better way to describe it. The first stage was the lethargic, pale-skinned sickly stuff that made Victorian ladies swoon. A vampire had been feeding on the victim, usually accompanied by feverish dreams, increased sex drive, and distinctive bite marks. (Not always on the throat, which Tony found annoying, because they’d ended up having to get a bunch of teenage girls to submit to strip searches -- which at least Doom had enough flunkies on hand that they could gender match like it was TSA officers during cheerleading tryouts or something.)

A person could live in first stage, and if they weren’t fed on again, they’d eventually get better. Theoretically. They’d managed to nab about a dozen young men and women in first stage. They were hospitalized and under heavy guard. So far, they hadn’t lost anyone from first to second stage.

Second Stage vampirism didn’t happen until the victim died. And they were buried without cautions; the families of some few victims had either recognized what was going on and mutilated the corpse, stuffing the coffins full of preventatives, or they’d cremated the remains.

Second stage was clearly marked when the dead victim returned to some state of animation. They weren’t even technically dead -- lack of heartbeat did not define death, and the brain was still active. The bite marks were gone, but that didn’t seem to matter, since it was almost impossible not to be able to recognize a second stage vampire if you’d ever seen a vampire movie in your life. Pale, cold skin, abnormally sharp nails and teeth, aversion to sunlight, garlic, crosses, running water, and the whole drinking human blood thing.

Stage two, however, wasn’t contagious. They could feed off humans and not infect them. And it was still curable. A stage two vampire could go back to human, if the sire was found and executed. Sometimes these stage two creatures would die, but sometimes they could go back to a normal life; albeit a life where they’d spend some time as creatures of the night and therefore, death might seem like the better option, depending on what they’d done while under the curse’s influence.

But once a person crossed stage three -- killing while feeding -- they were done. Nothing remained that was human, they were subsumed by the curse, and had to be stopped.

“Does it matter? Once the damned have hit the third stage, it is irreversible,” Doom said. “What we have done here is not evil work, Stark. It is necessary, else the plague of undead will spread.”

“I don’t understand why it hasn’t spread before,” Tony admitted. “The way these vamps feed, you’d think the whole of the earth would be undead by now. The hunger seems pretty compelling. We’ve had dozens of victims--”

“As I understand, a vampire does not need to feed regularly. Perhaps a half pint of blood every month will do, and for that, many modern vampires have formed blood pacts with humans; if the blood is drawn off through a needle, or a knife, the vampire may drink safely, without infecting anyone,” Doom said. He reached up and pushed at something on his throat. The mask he always wore clicked, and he drew it off.

Tony glanced, with the intent to immediately withdraw his gaze. Victor Von Doom was reputed to be horrifically scarred and hid his face out of some sort of shame. Tony didn’t want to embarrass him, just because the man wanted to breathe.

And then he couldn’t help but stare, because not only was Victor Von Doom fucking gorgeous, he was weeping. Opening, unashamed. Like, he hid his face because of a single, nearly straight scar no longer than Tony’s index finger, but he was okay with crying? That was either ego or empathy on a scale Tony had never dealt with before, and the part of his brain that was perpetually twelve years old was going _Both? Both. Both is good._

“You’re uh,” Tony said, making a gesture with one hand to indicate sometimes, or maybe nothing, in particular. “Crying.”

“So are you,” Victor told him. “I didn’t want you to have to weep alone. We are not doing evil, here, Antony. This must be done. And there is no shame in feeling remorse for the difficulty of the task.”

***

The rituals and trappings of God, Tony decided, were more to help the slayers than the slain. But it wasn’t helping.

The vampires might have been evil, beyond redemption, spreading their plague of bloodthirst across Latveria, Romania, Transylvania (fucking Transylvania, because of course they were, and really?) but they they were still kids. They were confused teenagers who’d been looking for love and acceptance.

They wept when they lost.

They threw temper tantrums.

They went on vengeful killing sprees in minimalls and at Starbucks.

They were all so. damn. _young_.

But the prayers, the forgiveness from God, the purification rituals that Victor insisted on, they weren’t _helping_.

It was the middle of the night and Tony was still staring at the scarred wood table in the house that Victor had given him. He hadn’t been to sleep all night. In fact, he couldn’t remember how long it had been since he slept, not really.

Tony was used to all nighters, or even engineering binges.

He was used to nightmares and panic attacks.

What he wasn’t used to was this sound, on the very edge of his consciousness that sounded like a girl crying.

All the time, just crying.

And when he got closer to sleep, she wept louder until he would have done anything to make her stop.

There was a quick rap at Tony’s door before it opened, admitting Victor Von Doom. He was dressed casually, which Tony had never seen before, soft linen drawstring pants and a slouchy shirt with a kangaroo pocket that Victor had both hands stuffed into once the door closed behind him. His feet were bare. “Saw your light on,” he told Tony.

“Yeah, come in,” Tony said, gesturing to the empty chair. There was a shared camaraderie in the horrible things they’d been forced to do, together.

A feeling that, of all the people in the world, only Victor could understand. That only Victor would care, and could possibly forgive him.

“Can’t sleep?”

“Can you?”

“No,” Victor said, and he didn’t bother to sit in the chair. He crossed his legs and dropped onto the floor near Tony’s feet. Put his head against Tony’s knee.

_Someone call the press, Iron Man is petting Doctor Doom’s hair._

“I’m so sorry,” Tony said, voice breaking. “These are your people.” However bad it was for Tony, it had to be infinitely worse for Victor. Hard to remember, in that moment, that Tony and Victor were enemies, that they were often on opposite sides of a battlefield, not watching each other’s backs. Not saving each other’s lives.

Victor was making a soft, keening sound in the back of his throat, a muffled wailing of loss and grief. Tony didn’t even quite know how it happened, but then he was on the floor, holding Victor close. Victor’s hands were tight around Tony’s back, clutching him desperately, Victor’s wet, heated face pressed against Tony’s chest as he wept.

When the storm had passed, Victor looked up, his hazel eyes red-rimmed and lashes sticky with tears, and he was the most beautiful, tragic thing that Tony had ever seen.

They were kissing before Tony realized it, and when he did realize it, it only made the sudden rush of heat and hormones more urgent.

“One night,” Victor was saying, pressing kisses against Tony’s throat, “say, say you--”

“Yes, yes,” Tony said, surrendering.

One night. One bout of madness. One reassurance against the darkness that they were still whole and human and alive.

***

It was over.

The originator of the vampire plague was dead. And not without cost, Tony had been bitten a half dozen times or more. Teach him to decide that the undead couldn’t figure out how to work tech. It hurt, but the vampire was dead (re-dead? whatever.) and Tony wouldn’t turn. A few weeks of feeling sick and light-headed and he’d be fine. As long as he didn’t give in to the urge to drink blood and kill someone.

Not likely.

He glanced at Victor. “You will--”

“I will,” Victor promised, and the words didn’t need to be said. Victor would make sure that Tony didn’t turn. He would kill Tony if he had to.

Tony was pretty hopeful that Victor wouldn’t need to, but there was no sense in tempting fate. Better to be sure.

“Thank you, again, for your help, Anthony,” Victor said, and he offered Tony his hand. Tony took it, clasped it between both of his.

They hadn’t spoken of that night of passion together. They wouldn’t, Tony thought, speak of it.

It was over.

All of it.

“It was my very great privilege,” Tony said. “My pleasure. Any time.”

“I can hope I won’t have a problem of such a trying nature again,” Victor mused, and he didn’t let go of Tony’s hand either. “But it is good to know that I can rely on you, if I do.”

“Leave off trying to take over the world, Vickie,” Tony said, “and maybe we can be friends.”

“I’ll consider it.”

It was nice, Tony thought, the way Victor had relaxed. How he never referred to himself in the third person any more.

Tony wondered if he could, actually, face Victor across the field of battle again. He hoped he wouldn’t have to find out.

“I’ll, uh, be seeing you.”

He didn’t wait for a response, clapping the faceplate down and using the repulsors to launch himself skyward.

It was a long flight back to New York.

It was a long night.

And long days that stretched into long weeks. Nothing happened in Latveria. Someone ran a cover story about Tony Stark being back in rehab to explain his long absence, and his general weakness when he got home. Tony didn’t bother to correct it.

He felt like he should go into rehab, but what the hell was he going to say, “I’m Tony Stark and I’m not-yet-addicted to drinking blood, but I think I might be addicted to the kisses of a supervillain?”

Yeah, that would make the front page on every newspaper in the country.

He tried to lose himself in work.

He managed to hold out for almost two weeks before he was stepping into the suit and jetting back to Latveria.

The house door opened to him without pause and Victor’s butler ushered him in. Tony shed the suit as he walked, dressed in his shop clothes, jeans and a ragged band tee.

“Anthony,” Victor said. He was standing by the fire, striking a pose. Beautiful, silver-haired and gently smiling eyes. He held out a glass of pale champagne. “I knew our paths would cross again. Champagne?”

Tony plucked up the single glass from the table. A rose lay next to it, deep red with a golden  interior. An Iron Man rose, if ever there was such a thing. Lovely. He took a sip of champagne, the burnt toast taste on his tongue. It was still cold.

"How often have you had a bottle of champagne out, just waiting to see if I'd drop by?"  
  
Victor stepped closer to him, bunching his hand in Tony’s shirt, bringing him in for a kiss. "Every. Night." 


End file.
